WHAT ARE 3 paragraphs about the iron lung
Rick - The iron lung is an important part of medical history. By definition the iron lung is an airtight metal tank that encloses all of the body except the head and forces the lungs to inhale and exhale through regulated changes in air pressure. According to Robert Hall author of History of the British Iron Lung, the first scientist to appreciate the mechanics of respiration was John Mayow. In 1670, John Mayow demonstrated that air is drawn into the lungs by enlarging the thoracic (chest) cavity. He built a model using bellows inside which was inserted a bladder. Expanding the bellows caused air to fill the bladder and compressing the bellows expelled air form the bladder. This was the principle of artificial respiration called external negative pressure ventilation or ENPV that would lead to the invention of the iron lung and other respirators. The first modern and practical respirator nicknamed the iron lung was invented by Harvard medical researchers Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw in 1927. The inventors used an iron box and two vacuum cleaners to build their first respirator. Almost the length of a subcompact car, the iron lung exerted a push-pull motion on the chest. In 1927, the first iron lung was installed at Bellevue hospital in New York City. The first patients of the iron lung were polio sufferers with chest paralysis. Entire hospital wards were filled with rows of iron lungs at the height of the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and 1950s. With the success of the worldwide polio vaccination programs which have virtually eradicated new cases of the disease, and the advent of modern ventilators that control breathing via the direct intubation of the airway, the use of the iron lung has sharply declined.
